Viewing the different technologies on the grid as isolated competitors in which one must "win" over the others as if they were Walmart vs Costco is a mistake. E.g. nuclear providing 20-30% of the load is a must, but providing more than 60% is a drag. The trick is to get, slowly evolving, a good mix in the grid that is reasonably cheap and green (wind and solar) and reasonably stable (nuclear, hydro and gas). Too cheap and you get blackouts. Too stable and you get high prices and CO2.
Norway is a huge energy exporter, but regularly imports because of reduced hydro generating capacity.
Expanding storage capacity is generally a problem because of the massive environmental impact.
I have recently come to the conclusion that hydro is a very good complement to wind because the hydro is dispatchable when the wind doesn't blow. As long as the average wind and hydro together exceed needed capacity, things should be good.
As I understand it, this is what Norway is doing. Importing wind from Germany when there is excess and exporting hydro when there is a shortage.
Meh. It could be put completely underground. (We could put nuclear power plants hundreds of meters deep underground too.) People don't want to spend on it is the real problem.
On top of that, the ongoing release of e.g. methane for years after construction coupled with the environmental cost of the construction materials means it takes a long time for dams to even pay off the environmental debt they create.
The death toll from hydro is also not all that reassuring. Even if you subtract the Ban Qiao dam failure, the single most destructive power plant failure in history[1], beating e.g. Chernobyl several times over, construction accidents and the like adds up, and contributes to a lasting maintenance burden where guaranteeing sufficient maintenance becomes a growing risk to downstream downstream populations for as long as the dams exist.
I'm sure there are places where dams are still reasonable choices, but they're no unambiguously good choices.